CLAUSTROPHOBIA.

I even HATE typing that long damn word!  It is one of my, and I'm sure a LOT of people's, greatest fears.  Nobody wants to be stuck in an elevator, just like nobody wants to be stuck on a planet filled with pod people.
 
Yes folks, this is the third remake of 1956's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", so in this day and age of remakes [or "Re-imaginings...Whatever!] Warner Brothers has brought upon us an invasion for the new millennia!
 
I was not too gung-ho about seeing this right away, was more apt to eventually rent it, but I woke-up Sunday and realized I didn't have any plans, so I called my pal Thump and asked if he'd like to catch "The Invasion" with me, and off we went.
 
The movie starts with a frantic Nicole Kidman ransacking a looted pharmacy, going thru all the shelves, naming all sorts of interesting sounding "Dolls", she finds a few, pockets 'em and keeps looking.  Then we see her opening a 2 litre of "Mountain Dew" and gulping away as if her life depended on it.  She whispers "Must stay awake...Can't go to sleep..."
[FADE OUT....CUE CREDITS]
 
Ruben sits up in his seat. "Oh THIS is gonna be GOOD!" I think to myself, and I was right!

The premise of the movie is that one of our space shuttles crashes on re-entry, the bits and pieces that have landed are covered with some sort of sporous bacteria [ie: Space Mold!!!]
 
The story is nice and basic, Carol [Nicole Kidman] and her ex husband Tucker [Jeremy Northam] are in the midst of a visitation war over their only child, Oliver [Jackson Bond], however, within the first 10 minutes of the movie we see that Tucker has been exposed to the Space Mold when he goes to visit a wreckage site and some little girl calmly states "Hey Mister, this was on our roof" and hands him a small piece of debris that I figured actually BIT him the way he screamed like a little girl and drops it.
 
So Oliver goes to spend a week with "Dad", and Carol is concerned as her little boy has never spent more then a night away, "I can text you Mommy!" he gleefully exclaims as she hugs him goodbye, I think I was the only one in the packed audience that laughed when the small child said that...God I feel old!
 
Carol is a psychiatrist and is visited by a patient, Wendy [portrayed by Veronica Cartwright, who, herself was in the 1978 remake of "...Body Snatchers"], a very, very welcome surprise to see her in a large part and as a nod to her own version.  Anyway, Wendy is stressed-out that her husband, isn't quite her husband.  Carole gives her a prescription for, like, 5 more pills and sends her on her way.  Problem, Solution.
 
We find that Carol has been seeing a nice doctor, Ben [Daniel Craig], who takes her to a lavish dinner party and she is immediately verbally attacked by an uptight Russian Ambassador who questions her stand on the human race, and why we feel we need to give everyone pills to make all of our ailments go away.  Carol holds her own, which she then quickly realizes as time goes by that she is quite wrong in that assessment.
 
The movie does quickly evolve from character development, to the claustrophobia and paranoia that SHOULD BE an "Invasion" remake!  At one point we even witness Carol become just as paranoid as we witnessed someone else earlier in the film.  Along the way she stumbles into other people who aren’t infected and they calmly tell her to show no emotions and continue making eye-contact with all of the other infected people if she wants to “Pass” as them.  I enjoyed these segments as if it were I that was trying to make my way and still have some kind of hope that there are others out there who are “Normal” still.

Carol, Ben and Ben’s scientist colleague Stephen [Jeffrey Wright] get a hold of some of the “Skin” that infected people cocoon in and try to make some sense of it.  They also find that once infected with the Space Mold it transforms you into a mindless drone when you go to sleep, once you hit maximum REM’s, something about the brain activity leaving you susceptible to being taken completely over.  Ergo, the opening scene is brought back to us and we now understand why Carol was trying to stay awake.
 
The acting is great, the suspense is edge of your seat, the pod people...creepy!  I was greatly impressed with the movie and the message it brought, without being too preachy.
 
There were a few places in the movie that I thought were unrealistic, but I always kept in mind that this was one of those Sci-fi/Suspense/Horror-lite flicks, and continued to just have fun with it, be grossed-out, jump and continue to feel...claustrophobic.

I think I may read a book instead of going to sleep tonight…

I give it 3 stars out of 5